Music is Spoken

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. What happens when the music is spoken? When a person  speaking inspires music around him? Connects someone’s musicianship with a picture? He creates a type of synaesthesia where instead of translating tones into colors the listener is seeing whole situations followed by the emotions and the atmosphere they bring through music.

http://www.mixcloud.com/pekingese/music-is-spoken/

Jack Kerouac w/ Al Cohn&Zoot Sims- American Haikus

After each verse that Jack Kerouac reads from his poetry, either Al Cohn or Zoot Sims are playing an improvised phrase. Their phrases tend to give Kerouac’s verses the right picture, tempo and emotion of the moment he is describing. That gives this piece of spoken music an ability to offer a synaesthetic experience for the listener. At first you hear a verse but the moment you hear the musical phrase you picture it. True masterpiece!

Ken Nordine – Reaching Into In

Ken Nordine describes a dreamy atmosphere that resembles everyday life and those moments  when all of sudden everything around you becomes mysterious. The music has the right intensity. It has lounge sound that reminds us of comfort, but also has a dark mystery moment that loops in a way which makes you feel like you’re stuck in a very strange place. Everything seems normal but your thoughts don’t allow you to think that way. Listen…listen….

Peggy Lee-Chinese Love Poems

This just sounds beautiful! Peggy Lee’s voice reading and harpist Stella Castelluci playing impressionistic arpeggios that sound equally pleasant as the atmosphere of these Chinese love poems. Blossoms, lake, butterflies…

Charlie Mingus- Scenes In The City

True masterpiece from “A Modern Jazz Symposium of music and poetry with Charlie Mingus”. The spoken part is written by Mingus but it is Langston Hughes who adapted the piece to sound like a short theatre play. It is about a young guy’s dreams and how the reality is crushing them. Mingus uses different tempos to make contrast between the main character’s mood swings. His nostalgic daydreamings expressed with ballad feel and his problems that destroy his dreams in the big city expressed with fierce tempos and wailing saxophones. Best example of a telepathic interaction between spoken word and improvised music.

Nat King Cole-The Three Trees

Unlike the previous pieces of music that present spoken word with improvised phrases that draw the meaning, this piece has few important parts from the story and they have a certain melodic phrase. Beautiful bubbling spring, three trees, there, there and there, pretty little rabbit, run through the woodland forest, beautiful bubbling spring, three trees, there, there and there, pretty little rabbit, drinking, beautiful bubbling spring, three trees, there, there and there, a hunter, forest, pretty little rabbit, drinking, the hunter, beautiful bubbling spring, three trees, there, there and there, the hunter, shot, rabbit, beautiful bubbling spring,  three trees, there, there and there.

Raymond Scott- Limbo: The Organized Mind

Jim Henson and Raymond Scott are taking us to a journey inside a human brain. The music is so dark and creepy at moments, you will start to feel like Jim Henson is hypnotizing  you to go to the same places in your brain. I am glad they are just joking, because if they didn’t they would have brain damaged a lot of people by now. Maybe they did? Who knows?

Babs Gonzales-The Be-Bop Santa Claus

His opening statement about jazz and poetry is explaining a stupid problem that repeatedly harms art. A  thing is big at the moment when everybody starts to copy it, but at the same time that distances the artist from his instinct which is the most honest part of his character. He says “Everybody is talking about jazz and poetry that happens to be the big thing right now, but about 1955 I did one that was the biggest to me and I know nothing about jazz and poetry, all I know was called entertainment”.

Henry Rollins-Cold Heart

A piece from Hall Willner’s tribute album “Weird Nightmare – Meditations on Mingus”. The band is swinging and Henry Rollins reads a excpert from Charles Mingus’s autobiography “Beneath the Underdog” about the word- groovy.

Louis Armstrong-Lonesome

The music master recites in rubato tempo. This track sounds exactly as I imagine ancient master poets would have recited accompanied by music. The words fall on time as the melody but they stay that way. They are words. Whenever I hear Satchmo I feel his desire to sing those words, but no! Singing is beautiful! This is something else! He is stuck in a moment from his past! The song is here, he hears it but he’s not able to sing it. Sweet and painfull!

Slim Gailard-Avocado Seed Simphony Soup

Slim Gailard’s charisma allows him to do whatever he likes and people will be amazed. A real example of a true artist whose loyalty to his instinct distinguishes him from the others. I love this piece because it’s recorded live and you can hear the crowd and their excitement. The atmosphere is surreal.  The music sounds like mixing stand-up comedy and a band rehearsal. I’m pretty sure that you won’t find anything similar to this.

Les Paul& Mary Ford-The Case of The Missing Lespaulverizer

It’s “The Les Paul Show” that was broadcasted by NBC (The National Broadcasting Company ). Radio shows often pass into the territory of spoken music genre. Whenever a voice presents something you hear it and it catches your attention the same way music does. Radio shows are the most practical pieces of spoken music. There the music and the spoken word are equal.